Promises
by Bossy Mossy
Summary: Skye might have found it sickeningly funny, if it had been even minutely humorous. He had made the same promise to himself years before, after all. Jill/PonyxSkye. HM:DS Cute, IoH and SI. Oneshot.


I've had this idea floating in my head for a while. I firmly believe that Vaughn is the output of Jill and Skye. Enjoy.

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><p>It wouldn't be a lie to say that the small community of Forget-Me-Not Valley wasn't pleased when their residential farmer announced herself to be wed to the town's first criminal. Their relationship had been kept quiet for as long as they could allow it to be, until one faithful Spring morning, during a festival. The young man had smiled sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head, apologizing for the way he had acted in the past, and promised that he would no longer be bothersome to the community.<p>

While the younger civilians took the apology at face value and congratulated the soon-to-be newly weds, Vesta and others merely looked the other way. They were not quite as taken by the man's apology as their younger neighbors were, and with stimulated smiles and promises of good fortune for the young couple, they left their interaction with the two to a minimum and spoke to each other behind closed doors.

Skye had noticed the way they gave him wary glances, and did the best he could to try and win their trust back, offering them wide, if not nervous smiles, nimble fingers swiping the snowy hair from his face. Jill, on the other hand, didn't seem to mind the way her elders looked down on the couple. She was loud and free-spirited, even if a little hard-headed, and she wasn't about to let a couple of the town's residents bring them down - she let them know this, even as her boyfriend attempted to hush her, a blush on his face.

Jill and Skye were as smitten with each other as could be, and not too long after their marriage, word of mouth reached the other residents of the town that the able-bodied farmer was with child. It was a humorous sight, really, watching as the pale, almost feminine thief tried to complete farm work for his wife. She did her own work and planted crops and fed her animals for as long as she could, and Skye did as best of a job as he could after that, considering his experience.

It had been a tragedy, something almost unheard of in the Valley. There was nothing that the doctor nor Jill's anguished husband could do; it was just something that occurred, a rare complication. The bleeding couldn't be stopped, the stout doctor told Skye, and there was nothing he could do to help her. He offered condolences as he handed the young man his son, and with nothing more the doctor began making arrangements to have the makeshift hospital room sterilized.

Skye had no idea what to do with the pale-skinned child in his arms, who refused to be silent, his face contorted and pink as he wailed and cried, his father stricken silent. While his son squawked and balled his fists up, unhappy with how he was being held and his cheeks damp with tears, his father was looking off somewhere into the distance, nearly identical tracks dripping down to his chin and onto his son's blanket.

The older members of Forget-Me-Not Valley still turned the other cheek, ignoring the problems that were going on, for the most part. Vesta offered the single father vegetables and meals for a few weeks until the man could get his footing, getting over the death of his wife while still trying to celebrate the birth of his son - whom he had named Vaughn, and gave no one an explanation as to why - as well as trying to maintain the farm that his wife had loved so dearly.

He tried, he really did. It wasn't easy for the man, who wasn't used to how much work and love that went into a farm. He had merely observed his wife from a distance, and occasionally helped with feeding the animals or watering the crops. He tried to balance his time between the farm that he had suddenly inherited and his growing son, but as time went on, he sold the animals that his wife had cared for and put the ranch on the back burner. His son was almost ten years old, and needed the attention a child required; something his father couldn't give him with all of his other burdens.

It was too late. His son had grown from a wailing, colic-suffering infant to a curious and thriving little boy, but whenever he needed his father, he was always busy. He grew up tending to himself, finding ways to entertain himself and keep himself busy and out of the way. As he grew older and began to become less innocent to the ways around him, Vaughn began to take care of the animals on the farm for his father, hoping his actions would help lessen his father's workload, even if minutely.

When his father tried to intervene and step into the position he had been graced with fifteen years prior, trying to do right by his son and put food onto the table, was when Vaughn decided he didn't want to stay in the suffocating Valley any longer.

It had started easily. Skye sold a few of his wife's chickens and their offspring for some gold; money was tight, and his son needed fed. They paid well, and they needed the money desperately. They weren't starving, but he knew there were many nights where he had the boy go spend the night at his friend's houses just to make sure he had a dinner, or, as the boy became older, where he would wander off in the night to harvest wild mushrooms or crops for spare gold and to fill his stomach.

It went from a few chickens here when he was a small child to being all of them, and, eventually, all of the cows and horses and sheep. Vaughn had been ignorant to the situation until he stepped outside one morning, still bleary eyed and responding to the ruckus the farm animals were causing, to see his father getting handed a wad of gold and the animal dealers take away his beloved animals with no more as a bat of an eyelash.

He had to watch as the animal dealers came onto the farm and detained the animals, taking them out of their warm barn and holding no grief nor love for the beings. They tied ropes around their necks and put the chickens into portable cages and hauled them onto the back of their truck, passing his father the money they had promised. Their touches were cold and uncaring, and as one of them tugged his beloved horse along, fury and hatred erupted in the young man.

Vaughn had observed the exchange with wide, violet eyes, unmoving and wordless, and when his dad turned to him with a smile and a promise of, "we'll have steady food now, I promise," the teen couldn't take it anymore. He clenched his teeth and shouted childishly at his father, hot, angry tears welling in the corners of his eyes.

"Why would you do such a thing, Dad? I loved those animals!"

"We needed the money, Vaughn. You want to eat, don't you?"

"We could have done something else!" Vaughn snarled. "We could have... we could have asked Celia and Marlin for help! I could have asked Van for a loan! We -"

"When you start relying on people is when you get hurt," Skye snarled back. "When you let yourself depend on other people, they fail you, and you get hurt. I was just trying to do the best I could. If you don't like it, you can leave."

Vaughn had been stricken silent, and Skye would have found it almost bitterly ironic to know that the same expression of anguish that had been on his face nearly sixteen years prior was now on his son's face. It didn't stay saddened; it erupted to into a pure hatred, his hands balled into fists at his sides and his nails digging onto his calloused palms.

"I _hate_ you!" He spat, before taking off towards the Goddess Pond.

Skye had tried his best, but it was too late, he realized. His son was no longer a little boy anymore, and he had missed his chance to properly father his only child. The next week, when his son turned sixteen, he had packed up his bags.

"I can't stay here any longer," he murmured, his voice soft. He realized it was the first time he had spoken since his outburst a week prior. "I hate it here. I'll do fine on my own. I've been doing it for a while, after all."

Skye tried. "You're only sixteen, Vaughn," the man reasoned,"You're still a child. I can support you.. we just need to find other sources of income."

"Letting yourself depend on other people gets you hurt," the boy responded, throwing his father's words back at him, twisted and wrong. "I'm going to move into the city and get a job. I'll send you a letter and some cash as soon as things get steady."

"Vaughn..."

"I'm not going to let anyone get hurt because they relied on me," he mumbled to himself. With that, on his sixteenth birthday and sixteen years after his mother had died, he picked up his bags and grabbed his hat and left.

Skye had a smile on his face as his son looked back for the last time. It was ironic, after all...

The ex-thief had made the same promise to himself years earlier.


End file.
